


before. after. now.

by ocheeva



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-26
Updated: 2014-01-26
Packaged: 2018-01-10 02:09:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1153506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ocheeva/pseuds/ocheeva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Flash fiction; three pieces covering two soldiers' relation to each other over the course of three games.</p>
            </blockquote>





	before. after. now.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [widow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/widow/gifts).



This is before.  
Before the stability he has allowed himself to rely on is disrupted, before he sees her features twist into a mask of impenetrable anger, before he doubts her for the first time (and the second, and the third, and countless more throughout the years). Before the static smell of thunder mixed with a tinge of white sharp salt makes him sick and sorrowful beyond even his own comprehension and even though there is something heavy in the air here, a wordless feeling between the three of them when they catch a moment together before Ash leaves with the salarian officer, something about the sun tickling his neck and the sound of waves gives him some scrap confidence. Before he loses both of them, before he spends two years mourning and long before he will look her in the eye and speak words he’d never believe he could utter, not to her. This is before, in a time when he almost thinks she is indestructible, unconquerable, nearly infallible despite her obvious flaws; before his world and heart and mind is changed.

This is after.  
After she’s died and returned and refused to think about this fact for so long in fear that she, for all her brilliance and determination and strength, would admit her own mortality and allow death to seep into her every thought and action until she crumbles and give in. After she’s faced him and asked him to trust her and watched him leave as she went on to save the galaxy - twice - without him by her side. After he came back to her ship and her crew and fought with her despite the lack of shared words between them, after they’ve seen the captain they met under stay behind on a planet seized by enemies who will not fall no matter how many bullets she sends their way. After she carries his limp and damaged body on board the Normandy, her gut clenching around the dread of losing him after just barely getting him back, and brings him to the Citadel where he is taken away to calming views of the Presidium and antiseptic smells. This is after he has stared down the barrel of her gun and survived and he smiles into the warmth she offers when she calls him _brother_.

And this is now.  
This is a world untouched by fire, a sky too blue and serene to be real and he keeps his head low, his gaze lower, fingers frantically twisting wires together and the glow from his left hand colouring his surroundings eerily orange. This is a distress beacon sending signals out to a universe that might be eternally silent, dark outside this unbroken atmosphere and a dry-throated man who doesn’t sleep because waking up means realising the possibility of her second death. It is long nights and longer days of surviving, existing but not living. It is too many legs and arms tangling when the pilot with bones as fragile as a bird’s shouts that someone else is out there, sailing between stars. It is hours of slowly fading hope when there are answers to one of the two only questions that matter but not the other, of suffocated rage and lonely violent outbursts and no victory has ever felt so hollow.


End file.
